Mary is on those sessions where Flo was MIA - YCHL, Sincerely, etc.

as for things like Christmas and all, M and F just weren't scheduled to be in the studio. sure they might have been at Hitsville hanging out or whatever but there was a specific schedule as to what producers would be in what studio and who needed to be in there with them. it might be that they were only recording horns and strings for some track. or a whole slew of backing vocals. or they had a lead singer in town and 5 different producers were scheduled to record 9 different tunes with that 1 singer.

if M and F were in City X performing as The Supremes, they wouldn't even know what the latest albums/songs being planned for them would be. sometimes a producer might get the OK to spend the money on a ticket and fly to wherever a group was appearing and rent studio time/space locally. maybe Deke or Frank or Eddie would fly to NYC and have Diana join them for part of a day and knock out lead vocals for 7 tunes. and maybe they would also schedule time for the backing vocals too. or maybe those were already recorded. perhaps that track was actually originally assigned to the sups but maybe the producer was also thinking MRATV or maybe Kim Weston could do it. still TBD to some degree - so he goes ahead and has the As do the backing vocals because then all he needs is some lead to do the track. be it Diana Martha or Kim. then he can finish mixing the tune and present it to the QC meeting.

we all take this a bit more personal than i really think it was. this was more about Producer X hoping to get SOMETHING out on his name to make money. if he could get a superstar group like the Sups assigned to it, GREAT!! but MRATV, Brenda Holloway, the Spinners, the Tops, Tammi, etc - anyone and everyone just might get a hit. So it was about getting product out